"What frightens ye so about the normal course of events, Fiona mine?''

"If Alexander is planning something dreadful, don't answer his call, Colly," she begged him.

"He is my brother, sweeting."

Fiona sat up, suddenly forcing him from his comfortable pillow. "I am yer wife," she said quietly. "I am the mother of yer bairns. Do ye not owe me a greater loyalty than ye owe him?"

"Alexander and I are bound by blood, sweeting."

"We are bound by God," she replied. "Would ye place the Lord of the Isles above God, Colin MacDonald? Would ye dare?"

"Aye, I would," he said. He hated it when she spoke to him with such logic. It wasn't womanly. "I would put my brother above God because I shall have to answer to my brother in this life. I shall not have to answer to God until I die, and I shall make my confession repenting my sins, including my loyalty to Alexander MacDonald, before that event takes place."

“If ye have the good fortune to die in yer bed, and how many of ye highland warriors do?" Fiona asked him with devastating effect.

"Don't speak on it," he gently scolded her. "Ye will bring bad fortune to us all."

"I canna help it," she told him. "I have this great sense of foreboding, Colly. It follows me about like a dark cloud. I canna rid myself of it, though I would. Don't go if the lord calls ye!"

He flung himself from their bed. "Yer being foolish," he told her. "I will not disappoint my brother, for I am pledged to him."

"Yer pledged to the king, too," she said angrily.

"The king is not my blood kin," he shouted at her. "Besides, Nair has never fallen, Fiona mine. Ye and the bairns will be safe."


"So yer mam has told me," Fiona snapped, arising also.

Their views were too disparate for them to come to agreement on the matter, and so for the time being they avoided it altogether. Nelly and Roderick Dhu handfasted themselves in the hall before their lord and lady as well as the castle folk. When the priest came, they would repeat their vows, but they did not wish to wait any longer. Nelly, her carrot-red hair loose to signify her maiden state, cried happily when her new husband laid a length of his plaid across her chest, fastening it with a fine pewter pin. Fiona had provided a small celebratory feast, and Nairn honored the two valued servants by declaring a half holiday for all his people. It was a happy time.

Outside in the hills about them autumn had come. The trees blazed with scarlet, gold, tawny orange, and sunny yellow. The loch near them and the lochs they could see in the distance as the leaves fell from the trees, leaving naught but bare branches, were a wonderful shade of bright, deep blue. There seemed to be a peace upon the land. The men hunted deer and boar for the winter store. Fiona and Nelly gathered the seeds of the lacy white flower of the wild carrot that each would ingest to prevent conception.

"I'll bring no more bairns into this world until I am certain Nairn is here to be father to them," Fiona said. "The lord has not deigned his mischief yet, and until it is over and done with, I don't feel safe."

"I know," Nelly agreed. "When I ask him what will happen, my Roddy just pats me like some pretty animal and says, 'Now, then, lassie, such matters are not for the likes of ye.' The great gawk! Does he not think I can understand that a feud with a king can bring naught but trouble to the highlands? What is the matter with men, lady?"

Fiona shook her head. "I do not understand them myself, Nelly," she told her servant. "Ohhh, look over there! 'Tis a great patch of white flowers for us to harvest. We just have time before dark."

The two young women worked diligently, garnering the seeds they needed. When they had finished, the sun was close to setting, a half circle of fiery orange showing just above a bank of dark purple clouds edged in gold. Already the evening star gleamed in the darkening blue above them. As they walked the distance to the castle gate, Nelly suddenly cried out and pointed. Fiona stared, seeing a flame spring up on a distant hill. Was it a woodland fire? she wondered nervously. Then her heart almost rose in her throat to choke her as she saw another fire on another hill, and another, and yet another.

" 'Tis a signal of some sort," Nelly said. "Look! Before our gates the men are lighting one, too."

"God help us!" Fiona whispered. Picking up her skirts, she began to run toward Nairns Craig while all about her the hills blossomed with fires.

Nelly, close on her mistress's heels, did not drop her precious basket of flower heads. They were going to need them, she suspected.

At the gates Fiona demanded of the man-at-arms on duty, "What is this fire being lit for-and the others as well?"

"Why, my lady, 'tis a call to arms from the Lord of the Isles," he replied. "We have been waiting for weeks for it to come. There is another signal fire behind the castle so those in that direction may know the time has come, too."

Fiona hurried past him, making directly for the castle's hall. There she found her husband, a large goblet of wine in his hand. “Why is the Lord of the Isles calling ye to arms?" she demanded. "What is he going to do to avenge his honor?" The last word was uttered scathingly. "Tell me, Colin MacDonald, or as God is my witness, I will cut out yer black heart, and ye'll not go anywhere!" Her dark hair had fallen loose from her caul, and her green eyes flashed angrily.

"Why, sweeting, there is nothing to fret about. We but go to burn Inverness, scene of our disgrace. That is all."

Chapter 15

The words slammed into her brain like a brand. Burn Inverness. For a moment she couldn't speak, and then a rage such as Fiona had never known overwhelmed her. "Ye would raze Inverness? Have ye lost what few wits ye have, Colin MacDonald?" she screamed at him. "I will not let ye go off blindly to be killed!" She stamped her foot angrily at him.

The MacDonald of Nairn burst out laughing. His poor sweeting had never known such a situation, and she was, of course, frightened. He stepped forward to put his arms about her, but Fiona jumped back, almost hissing at him like a feral beast. "Fiona mine," he said, pleading. "Don't distress yerself. I will leave on the morrow and be back in a few days' time at the most. There is naught to be fearful of, my darling."

"Do ye not understand, Colly?" she demanded of him. "Are ye so thickheaded that ye don't understand? The king will retaliate!'"

"James Stewart is not in Inverness any longer, sweeting. We waited until he was south of the Tay, returned safely to Perth." He smiled at her. "There is no danger. We mean the king no harm, but the insult done to the Lord of the Isles must be avenged or he will be thought weak by the clans."

Fiona shook her head wearily. His loyalty to his brother was so deep and so blind that he could not see the terrible peril they would all be in when the king learned that Inverness had been burned by the Lord of the Isles and the highland clans. "Why would ye burn Inverness?" she asked him. “What have the people of that fair town done to ye that yer brother would destroy all they have? 'Twill not hurt the king. 'Twill only displace the poor townsfolk-and with winter coming on, too!"

“They hosted the king, sweeting. The people of Inverness rebuilt the hall where our disgrace was publicly displayed. We have sworn our fealty to James Stewart, but not to the people of Inverness," Colin MacDonald explained to his disbelieving wife.

"The king believed it necessary to make an example of yer brother," Fiona said to her husband. "I do not agree with him, but then I know Alexander MacDonald a wee bit better than James Stewart did. If he had known yer brother, he would have taken his hand in friendship two years ago instead of attempting to force the clans to his royal will and embarrassing them when he finally called a gathering. But yer brother, who has ruled here in the north, should know that the king believed he must be publicly harsh in order to convince ye that he means to rule all of Scotland and not just south of the Tay. He has executed two bad chieftains and a murdering Campbell for causing the wrongful death of a MacDonald kin. James Stewart favored neither one side nor the other, instead being impartial. Why can Alexander not simply accept what has happened? It is past. Let us have peace."

"Not without the honor of the MacDonalds being restored," Nairn said stubbornly. "This king must surely understand that."

“James Stewart will take the burning of Inverness as an insult upon his honor, Colly," she told him. "He will come north to punish us. Remember, he has learned all he knows from the English, and they are mean fighters, tacticians, and rulers. Yer brother, in his arrogance, is about to poke a stick into a bees' nest. When this is over, we shall all be badly stung, but The MacDonald on Islay less so than those of us here in the highlands. I don't call that just. Yer brother commands us to war, and then we suffer for it."

"Yer a woman, Fiona mine," he said. "Ye canna possibly understand," he told her, but he found that her words discomfited him greatly.

“Yer a man, Colin MacDonald, and canna help yer childish behavior that would put a brother ahead of yer bairns."

He held out his arms to her. "Come and kiss me, sweeting, and let us quarrel no longer."

Fiona shook her head. "I'll not kiss ye, or cuddle ye, or couple with ye until ye are safe home to me again," she told him. "Sleep in the hall tonight, my lord, with yer men. I will not share my bed with ye."

"What if I am killed, sweeting? Will ye not regret yer harsh decision then?"

"Yer hide is too thick for an arrow to pierce, and besides, what danger do ye face from poor frightened townspeople, my lord?" she mocked him. Then she left him.

Eventually, he knew, she would understand the ways of a highland chief. His duties not just to his own people, but to his overlord. He had indeed sworn fealty to the king, but he knew in his heart that his first loyalty would lie, as it had always lain, with the MacDonalds. They were his family, his clan, and he regretted that Fiona could not comprehend it. He would teach Alastair the same loyalty soon, and the sons that would come afterward, too.

Fiona knew her duty. In the morning she stood, her two eldest children clinging to her skirts, her infant daughter in her arms, watching as her husband and his retainers marched off down the castle hill to the road leading to Inverness. Unlike many of the chieftains who could muster two thousand or more men, The MacDonald of Nairn had but two hundred, and they were Rose family clansmen-his mother's people, for although he was a MacDonald by birth and acknowledged by his father, his inheritance had belonged to a lesser branch of the Rose family.

"They are like little boys playing," Fiona said grimly as the piper led the troop off, banners flying bravely.

"Will they all come back, I wonder?" Nelly asked.

"I believe so," Fiona said. "This is not a war they go to fight. They go to burn, pillage, and loot a hapless town of women, bairns, and shopkeepers. They should be ashamed of themselves, but they are not. They will all return to their homes boasting of their victory."

"Yer hard on him," Moire Rose said, coming up next to Fiona, smiling down at Alastair and Mary.

"Do ye agree with yer son then, lady?"

"No, I don't. I always thought the warfare foolish, but unlike ye, I didn't dare to say it aloud. It is our way and will not change."

"Ye must say it aloud now," Fiona told her. "James Stewart will not take this act of terror lightly. He will retaliate, lady. When he does, I would have Nairn align himself with the king, and not the Lord of the Isles. If both of us nag at yer son, my husband, then perhaps we may turn him from his path of self-destruction."

"He'll not listen," Moire Rose said fatalistically. "When Colin went to live with his father on Islay, he was taught the first rule of life was total loyalty to the Lord of the Isles. All Donald's children were taught that. Not one of them would break that rule, Fiona. Not one. Ye have no hope of changing a lifetime's habit, I fear."

"Then it is unlikely Colly will live to see his bairns grown," Fiona replied sadly. "They will burn Inverness, and the king will strike back at them. He will bring fire and death to the highlands."

Alexander MacDonald carried out his purpose and burned Inverness to the ground. His highland army of ten thousand strong slaughtered the inhabitants of the town and looted everything they could. The MacDonald of Nairn returned home laden down with booty on a cold, rainy day. It had been raining for three days straight, and the barren branches of the trees were black against the gray sky as the men rode up the castle hill.